Page 8 of The Fighter

“No,” I said softer. “I, uh, I like it. The soreness.”

He didn’t move for a minute, then slowly lowered himself back to the bed. I wanted to lay on his chest so he would run his hands through my hair. I loved that, the feel of his fingers on my scalp. No one had done that since… well…her, and since she hated me with every fiber of her being now, I’d never feel it again. I stayed still, though, as Con cupped my face again. He slipped his thumb between my lips. Relishing the ache in my jaw, I sucked.

His body shifted beneath the blankets, and I watched his eyes, the way they focused on my lips, the way a blush began to stain his cheeks. It turned me on how much he wanted me.

When he drew his thumb out of my mouth, I didn’t have to feel beneath the sheet to know he was hard again. He reached behind him and grabbed a condom off his nightstand. I was hard already, just from the crinkle of plastic.

After the condom was on, Con drifted a hand down my chest, gripping my hard cock and stroking it, then his fingers palmed my balls, tugging on them.

“On your back,” he said.

I complied immediately, rolling onto my back with a grunt, giving him better access. I drew my feet up, spreading my legs and planting my heels on the bed.

His fingers slipped lower, teasing my entrance which, yes, was sore too. But I didn’t give a good goddamn. I wanted him to fuck me again.

He rose up and kneeled between my legs, running those soft hands over my chest and stomach. He eyes took me in greedily, and I ate it up, wishing he had more than two hands so he could touch me everywhere at once. I wanted to besurroundedby Con,consumedby him.

“So gorgeous,” he said, softly, gaze on his hands where they traced my hip bones.

I didn’t look in the mirror anymore. Gorgeous wasn’t in my vocabulary. I wasn’t even sure I’d recognize myself. He braced a hand by my head and used the other to position his cock at my hole. I sucked in a breath and tried to loosen my muscles as he pushed.

His head drooped between his shoulders as he entered me, like it was too hard for him to hold up. I wanted to touch him, but I wasn’t sure I was allowed. That was why I liked when he tied me up. No questions.

My hands twitched, and Con was so fucking perceptive. His head shot up, and his gaze locked with mine. “Touch me, Tav.”

I loved the way he said my name, his top teeth cutting into his full lower lip on thev. I reached up and ran my fingers through his hair, then down his shoulders to settle on his narrow waist.

He began to thrust into me, gentler this time, maybe because we’d only had an hour of sleep after fucking each other half to death. Because he’d taken me twice more last night until I was a boneless heap and he’d had to clean me while I was nearly unconscious. But this morning…well, it wasn’t quite fucking. I wasn’t sure what it was, but he rolled his hips slowly, and I never understood what people meant when they said it wasn’t the size of the ship, it was the motion of the ocean—but now I knew. Because the motion, the rhythm Con was thrusting, was enough to make me feel the beginning of my orgasm in my spine in minutes.

His one hand was still planted in the bed, but the other was on my chest, squeezing skin and muscle, to the point of pain before he’d back off and move on. I squeezed his hips with my thighs and matched his rhythm, rolling my hips with him, because that was one thing I could do. I knew how to move my body, because if I didn’t, I’d get dead.

Last night, he’d talked during sex, uttering filthy shit that made my balls tight and my mouth dry. He spoke of all thethings he wanted to do to me and all the things I wanted to let him do. I still hadn’t tasted his cum.

But this morning, he was quiet, holding eye contact so intense that I had to look away every once in a while. He stroked me and gave me a nod to let me know that I could come. I was already close, so I let it build and build, until I came in his hand, gripping his ass as my neck strained.

Con came too, his eyes closed, mouth slack in bliss. Then his head fell onto my chest, his hot breath tickling the cooling cum on my stomach. I rubbed the skin I’d squeezed and ran my hands over the muscles in his back.

I’d hated my life for a long time, but I’d never hated it more in this moment, with Con in my arms, knowing that this would be it. That I’d only ever get snatches of happiness.

So I shut up my brain, and I focused on being Tav for these last few moments.

FOUR

Conrad

I stared out the window of my office at the traffic below. My forehead thunked onto the cool glass, and I closed my eyes. I should have been reading some reports or making some phone calls. Mergers and acquisitions never ended, and there was a company we were about to close on. Hell, even playing solitaire on my computer was better than letting my mind wander. Because now, just like this entire last week, every time my brain wasn’t occupied with a task, it strayed to Tav.

I’d woken up Saturday morning to an empty bed. Tav was gone. Only a couple of dark hairs on the pillow next to mine and a handful of used condoms in my bathroom trash was evidence he’d been to my apartment at all.

How I never heard him leave was a mystery. I slept light, always had, since my entire childhood. I had always kept one ear turned toward my bedroom door for the sound of the weaving footsteps on the hollow echo of our trailer floor. It was a tossup who my mother would let in our door at any odd hour.

I blinked my eyes open, staring sightlessly outside at the busy Friday afternoon. Tav might not even live in Detroit for all of I knew. Where did he live? Would I see him again?

Why did I care?

He was a hot fuck, perfectly submissive. But that was it. I didn’t do relationships, because I couldn’t afford people getting to know me, so the fact that he slipped out in the middle of the night, saving us an awkward morning, should have made me happy.

It wasn’t until I was drinking my coffee alone that I realized I had wanted to sit and have breakfast with the man, stare into those eyes in the daytime see how the light shining through my windows reflected in his two-tone irises.